Slegers full of praise for new signings after Arsenal beat Brighton in WSL | OneFootball

Arsenal women’s manager Renee Slegers has praised new signings Georgia Stanway and Lisa Baum, after the pair’s positive WSL debuts during their opening-day victory against Brighton. 

Speaking after her side’s 1-0 win, Slegers was full of praise for goalscorer Baum, after the 19-year-old German winger’s sensational solo goal was enough for Arsenal to claim all three points. 

“How she presents herself on the pitch, what she does, how calm she is means having that brilliant moment in front of our fans was very well deserved,” Slegers said. “I only saw her on video (before she signed) but I was convinced that she would make it for us, even with her age.

“She is so mature and composed, works extremely hard in training and is very engaged in meetings. She has had a really good preseason and we felt she was ready to start, despite playing away at Brighton being not the easiest scenario to make your debut.”

“We have a lot of competition in all positions, and we’re really happy for and with Lisa.”

Baum was not the only debutant to impress at the Broadfield Stadium, as goalkeeper Misa Rodriguez, signed after leaving Real Madrid this summer, made two important saves to affirm her selection over Germany’s Anneke Borbe.

“We have top goalkeepers in our squad now,” Slegers said. “Misa and Anneke have been doing really well in preseason so that was a close margin. Today, (Rodriguez) did everything we wanted her to do and kept a clean sheet so I’m really happy for her.”

England midfielder Georgia Stanway also made her first WSL appearance after joining from Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich, with Slegers saying that the 27-year-old brings “something different to our team.

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“We become more unpredictable for the opposition and Georgia has the quality of playing bigger and looks bigger so that brings a different dynamic to our midfield.”

Despite having 13 shots, six on target, with an xG of 1.32, Arsenal failed to add to Baum’s goal after 10 minutes, but Slegers was insistent her side were only just getting going.

“There’s much more to come,” she said. “We need to do more. We can do more. But there will be difficult moments in the season and it’s about how we respond to those moments and get wins over the line, so that was my biggest positive.

“Tactically, we are going to look at what we do when we have longer spells of possession, how we create and dictate tempo and working on minimising the opponent’s time on the ball, but the main positive today was that we got the win.”

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